Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to the then US President Jimmy Carter, has recently revealed details in the process of establishing diplomatic relations with China 30 years ago. He says China's peaceful rise has been of great help in dealing with international affairs together with the United States. Our Washington correspondent shanshan has the story.

Reporter:
The door to contact and exchanges between China and the U.S. was reopened when the US President Richard Nixon visited China in February 1972 and issued the Joint Communique. However, it took nearly seven years before the two countries formally established diplomatic relations on January 1, 1979. Brzezinski says despite the stalemate, it was on the President Carter's agenda to normalize relations with China after he took office in 1977.

"I will confess that in my list of priorities for the president which I submitted to him when I was national security advisor in the first year of his presidency, China was included as a major objective of foreign policy."

In May of 1978, Brzezinski was sent to Beijing to see the possibility of normalizing bilateral relations with China. Brzezinski says the trip was full of uncertainty on both sides.

"When he finally decided to send me to talk to Chinese leaders, we weren't sure whom I would really see when I would go. I remember when we were landing, my principle aide on China, Professor Michael Oxenburg, whispered to me 'let's look out the window to see what is greeting you, if it's the Foreign Minister, it would mean China has upgraded it to a more important status."
It was Foreign Minister Huang Hua who greeted Brzezinski at the airport, which cleared a doubt on the US delegation. In the following years, he has met with the Chinese leader several times, but he says the most impressive meeting was the one they first met in 1978.

"Much to everyone's surprise, Deng Xiaoping invited me to dinner, in which we talked further of the normalization and how we could structure the process. He kind of wistfully said me, it may not be ever possible for me to visit America. I said 'You will be in American, and if you come to America, I will treat you in my house to a very American dinner with my family'. Seven months later, Deng Xiaoping came to Washington and on the first night, he and his wife came to have dinner with my family."

Soon after the normalization of bilateral relations, Deng Xiaoping visited the U.S. at the invitation of U.S. President Jimmy Carter, opening a new chapter in the history of China-U.S. relations.

It's been 30 years since the ground-breaking event took place. Over the years, Brzezinski has visited China for many times. As an expert of international strategic issues, Brzezinski says China has followed a path of peaceful rising over the decades, and has been playing an increasingly important role in dealing with international affairs together with the US.

"China has been on the whole extremely helpful for example, in the negotiations with North Korea. In fact the negotiations with North Korea, which is stalemated again, would have not gotten this far without very active Chinese role, which in some respects, involves a kind of co-leadership in the process with us. The Chinese do have a major interest in the Iranian issue being resolved peacefully. So I view Chinese today, as in its self-description, fits it as essentially "peacefully rising". Brzezinski says the US and China has a stake in each other's success.

SS, CRI news, Washington.